![]() ![]() Action points are posted at the host stand: Tell a member of congress. On June 21, a Canadian company announced they’d purchased rights to begin mining there.Ĭastle and Spalding still fight-attending protests, giving speeches, handing fliers to customers. “We call ourselves a monumental business,” says Spalding, “in that we came for the monument, we stayed for the monument, and we’re still here fighting for the monument.” Now, they worry about the future their clientele comes for the monument, too, and it’s been slashed in half. It’s also the restaurant’s backyard-and reason for existence. It’s filled with dinosaur bones, rock art, prehistoric dwellings and hidden-away slot canyons. One former employee joked that there was ‘too much estrogen in the restaurant.’ It didn’t strike us as funny-he was really saying we needed a man to run things.”įor the past year, Spalding and Castle have devoted themselves to another fight that hits equally close to home: the campaign to save the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which Trump dismantled last year, along with Bear’s Ears, in the largest reduction of national monuments in history.Ī monument since 1996, when President Clinton signed into protection 1.9 million acres of wilderness, the Grand Staircase is a wonderland for hikers, climbers, paleontologists and photographers. “So it’s always been a goal of ours to mentor women,” she says, “and most of our managers have been female. Meanwhile, Spalding worked in restaurants owned by men, where she experienced intense #MeToo situations. “And it felt right wearing it in public, but also scary. “I wore a ‘Keep your laws off my body’ shirt,” she says. Castle, whose single mom worked for a family planning clinic, volunteered at Planned Parenthood in college. ![]() ![]() The two never shied away from promoting women’s rights. You can talk to me.’ And they say, ‘Where’s Blake? I need to talk to him.’ So I say, ‘Well, he’s a lady too, so you can talk to me.’” “To this day,” says Castle, “when I initiate a repair call or when someone shows up wanting to sell me produce, they’re always looking for the man in charge. Though Spalding and Castle have become respected fixtures in their mostly-Mormon ranching community and throughout the Southwest, it hasn’t been easy for two liberal, feminist environmentalists to operate a business in a conservative, patriarchal state. So our vision was always counter-cultural.” “With a restaurant in a really remote location, we’d have a captive audience of guests who wouldn’t necessarily choose to eat organic, local food-but they’d eat with us by default, and I’d get the opportunity to proselytize. Spalding wanted a more direct way to teach the value of clean food. “In terms of educating the populace, we were preaching to the choir,” she says. Such establishments are common now, but they weren’t when the restaurant opened nineteen years ago-and they still aren’t in places like Boulder, Utah, population 200 and one of the nation’s most remote towns.īefore opening Hell’s Backbone Grill, Spalding worked for Greenpeace during an anti-pesticide campaign, she realized the organization’s limitations. Restaurant owners are making headlines as they navigate the turbulent waters between business and politics: How to handle protesting customers? To serve or not serve Trump’s loyalists? Should professionals publicize their personal views?īut for two women restaurateurs in a rural Utah town, the road to activism didn’t require a second thought.īlake Spalding and Jen Castle are chef-owners of James Beard-nominated Hell’s Backbone Grill, renowned for its organic, place-based, seasonally organized, farm-to-table food. ![]()
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